Welcome to the mentor. I'm Mark Boris Sam Kelly. Welcome to the Mentor.
Pleasure to be here.
You are the managing partner of Hello Social.
Yes, I'll go there right, Yes, yes, very much.
So what does Hello Social cold? Just give me an outline?
Yeah, Look, we've been a social media marketing agency around for sort of twelve years. We're actually going through a name change at the moment, changing our name to Hello to sort of better reflect what we are doing these days. I think, as you would know, and most people have
been on social for a long time. Social has evolved, and I guess what it takes to be a leading social media marketing agency now, I guess servicing the world's best brands is more than just running their social media channel. So we are a full service, integrated agency that does everything from strategy to production, producing content from stuff that's now going on sort of connected TV and TV all
the way down to Instagram grids. We've got a sort of a media buying marketing science division as well that look at the distribution and measurement of all sorts of marketing and then PR so PR and I traditional media has collided with social media now where they are much of a muchness in terms of you know, we're trying to drive fame and talkability. So something's going to blow up on social it's probably also going to blow up
in the media as well. So there's been a really nice sort of alignment there along with the rise of influencers and talent. So we've got a sort of a specialist division that works in there. So all in all, we've been geared up to master and win, I guess in the digital era.
So, I mean, you do have some big name clients, very big name clients, and I'm not going to go through them right now, but obviously big organizations need a full service. I wouldn't mind just breaking a few of those down because you know, a lot of people don't understand what PR is today. And it was interesting you said, PR not maybe not colliding, but can collide with lots of different things. But your PR is not necessarily around
corporate messaging. You know, a lot of PR people just assume that it's about protecting the brand, you know, sanitizing
the message. In other words, Well, we can't say that because we might upset them, And we can't say that because it might upset then prs actually covers a lot more stuff, So maybe you could just explain the start with PR if I, for example, only yesterday before I put out a note saying that I've interviewed the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition, and I put a little note out to say I'm not taking sites because I didn't want to be in that category because
it could be a PR disaster for me, because no matter what I do, I'm going to piss someone off. Because you know, let's assume fifty percent of population votes one way, fift percent population votes the other way, and if I just looked at my own audience, you know, be fair to say fifty percent, you're going to go one with others, So I can't look like I prefer anyone.
So from a PR point of view, it's crudely from what I'm looking at, from what we did, just crude PR point of view, I thought i'd better put out a statement first that said I'm just here to bring their story. But it has blown up because we're getting so much feedback, and because I've allowed someone to say, oh,
you know, Peter Dutton's you know, dance pants. As soon as they say that, other people kind of say you've got to be joking and it's created a few rare So no matter what you're messaging is you're always going to make half happy and half could be very unhappy. In terms of digital marketing or you know, digital presence of the brands that you represent, how important is it to make sure that you get the PR the PR part part right before we actually launch.
Oh look, it's absolutely critical, and you've hit the nail on the head in terms of identifying.
There's two sides to it.
One is getting the message in correct, and there's a lot of time and investment and brains spent on massaging the message. And then the next thing is how you can sort of take that message and I guess distribute it in a.
Way that it is going to travel.
One of the benefits of social media and PR is that you can have a message travel where others will pick it up and take it for you. So there's a number of benefits that people often trust it if it's coming from a I guess an independent media source or a word of mouth from someone they trust like a friend. If they're sharing it as opposed to the brand themselves paying an ad for you to see that message.
So it's a potent I guess formula in terms of I guess having impact and driving resonance and understanding of what you're trying to get out there. But at the same time, it's a high risk environment in that if your message is picked up and construed or taken the
wrong way, it can also have an adverse effect. So yeah, look, my advice here is you need to spend a lot of time before you go and try and pull off a stunt or a viral moment, or or kickstart the furor which often in some cases on social is led through extremism in terms of making sure that that message has been I guess looked at and hacked apart from all the different angles to make sure we feel like it's still going to work in the best interests of the brand.
So one time, Richie bro I had an opportunity once to sit next to Richard Brandson.
This is.
Pre about ninety might might have been around the time of the Virgin sort of kicked off in Australia. That's after Ansett got no trouble. I mean anyway, I can't remember exactly the period, but I was sitting on it was a Virgin flight. I happened to be sitting in business class and he was here in Austraina. He was
sitting next to me. So the stuff is, I'm going to take advantage of this, And I started talking about business names of businesses, because you know, like the decoy yourself Virgin, especially back then, it was a pretty full on thing, you know, like that's there's a pr disaster hanging in there. There was no social media at the time, but there was a potential powers of us hanging in there. And he already said to me, said he said brand names,
He said, must have cut through. He said, you're better off making fifty percent of the population happy at the risk of making the other fifty percent unhappy. Then you are having a name that doesn't have an effect whatsoever. So at least you're fifty percent of people on side. He said, you're never going to get it the way you want it. And I thought that was quite interesting. And actually, and he said some other things to me, and like your view on these things. He said some
other things to me which are really interesting too. He said, when you pick the word as opposed to the word having an image attached to it, that's one way you might pick the word virgin has an image at that stage attached to it. Virgins actually has an image of these days so much. But he said the letters, the sound of the letters in the word are really important.
He said, virg is a very strong sound Vergon. He said, it's easier for our brain, and maybe the science is not as evolved then as it is today about how our brain works. But he said, your brain will remember that word that sound more so than the word and the image. It doesn't necessarily remember the image, only members of the sound as well. And off the back of that, I came with the name Wizard because it had similar
sounding sounds. Didn't have the same image as vergiin of course, but it does have his own image, and I decided basically what he advised me. We didn't basically what he told me. It doesn't matter if you his people off people think how ridiculous that it is, And people did think it was ridiculous because in those days a name like wizard lending money that people say, well, what the hell
is going on here? Like it's acceptable now, but back then and the around that that territory is sort of where you guys have expertise, and you know, I was just lucky. I liked it because they had one conversation with one person acted on it. But now is much more scientific. But do those concepts that Brandson sort of told me back twenty more than twenty years ago, now, do they still apply in terms of your initial thinking around brand names, brand brand presence.
Yeah.
It's an interesting one and there's two very different schools of thought. I think, you know, we are all four brands being bold and salient and memorable and all these sorts of things. But I think that takes time, investment, and money. And you hear about the great ones that have a lot of character in their name, you know, and one of them is Isuba.
What was that.
On the other on the other hand, for other small businesses, there's some weird, wacky names out there now. Are people trying to be salient and weird or something that means something to them? And I think, you know, that is a great thing. But I said, the thing I would offset with that is it's also nice to say what it is on the tin. You know, we are confronted with eleven thousand messages a day and for someone to
stop and say Okay, I've seen wizard. It then takes another step for them to figure out what is that and how can they help me. So again, when we started Hello Social back in the day, and this was Max, my business partner who actually started the business. He's very literal because he speaks to things like Google search and rankings, and so when people look for a social media agency,
they type in the word social. So by having that in the name and they're knowing how our customers searched and found us, that was more of a force for us at the start. And then obviously we've then built out the brand and brand and the personality over time through things like colors and marketing tactics. So I do think it's important to be memorable and salient and different and even weird. We're a big fan of being weird,
especially disruptive to an industry. But as long as very quickly you can articulate how you can help an individual.
It's fair you're saying what the message is is that about when you say how you can help an individual?
Yeah, I think you do need to ensure that. Let's say you have a slightly off center brand name that very quickly when you were communicating in an ad or whether it's a byline on a website. The very next thing after the crazy name is what you do?
What you do? So hello social it's pretty ovious.
Correct, So that one's probably not that weird. We went the other way around. We went literally in the name, and then we showed up in a weird way. For instance, in our formative years, we had a meme that we put out every Wednesday, a marketing meme, and it was basically taking something was culturally relevant and applying you know, marketing jokes and overlay into that culturally relevant meme.
We put a lot of money.
Give me an example, just I don't quite understand that.
So let's say that we find something that's I guess could be could be trending at the moment. It could be, you know, some sort of pop culture type thing. It could be, you know, a dance move that someone in the NFL's just done after they've scored a try. And this thing is you know, internet fandom, pop culture goes viral and as a brand where we'd jump on that. And maybe let's say it was an NFL player dancing after or doing a backflip off the I just scored
a touchdown that went viral. We'd say, feels after you've just signed a new client, right, and that would be our meme. So I was very relatable to people within our industry, and then from there we would sort of
retarget them. So you either can go literal with a name and then weird with your sort of tactics, or flip it and have a sort of really out there name, but then you have to be quite sort of down the barrel with the information that comes next in terms of articulating, well, what does what does wizard?
What does wizard do?
Yeah, well, then that was a big issue for us because because initially no one knew what we did, and probably the biggest and I actually think today it's much more complicated to run brands and build a brand name and distributed the name out there. It's much harder than it was back then because then it was pretty simple. You know, my case, you had a name, then I put you know, we had a strap line, which we use an agency to help us work out. Jack single
and did it for me. I don't know, if you know Jack, he's ran your age, so maybe bet all than you Jack, I don't know. I can't tell. I can't tell the old job but not John, but not John seeing Jack and I need to get some botox now your son Jack, and and and So it was just a strap line because and a lot of people listening this would be saying brand names. You know, how do I market? Because most people got no idea. It's pretty difficult, it's quite stressful and cress a lot of anxiety.
But the name Wizard Home Loans. And then put it on the bottom. We will call Wizard Home Loans. Kerry actually Kerry Peat. Tom had dropped the name Homelans. He said, because people hate the fact that we don't want to borrow money from me. I don't want you, I don't want to know you money for the next thirty years. He said, just go with the wizard. So he actually taught me to drop in the name. But what we did put down on the bottom, we put down on
a strap line, said no judgments, just home loans. That's what Jack came up with. But we our platforms were easy those days, as the newspaper, television, radio, and we spent, as you said, we spend a fortune advertising like it was full on every day, you know, either on either on one of three or three and one particular time. Now we've got so many platforms that we can operate and everything becomes confusing which one should I go for?
And I would like to talk to you a little bit later about things like LinkedIn and TikTok and Instagram and blah blah blah. And there's probably other platforms now that I've never even heard of. But I do want
to wear platforms at a moment. But just in terms of the difficult, the degree of difficult, and you've been doing this for a long time now that the degree of difficulty, would you say it's much harder today, apart from the fact that markets are crowded, much harder than today, not in relation to Hello Social, but in relation to brands that you look guys look after now, isn't much harder today to build and launch a new brand compared to say, what it was fifteen years ago challenging.
It's interesting the practice of it is. It's very easy to launch a brand today.
Anyone can do it.
You know.
You go and register of business, you get a logo done online on some sort of tool yourself, and start on Instagram and you are off.
I should have said successfully.
That changes things, So yes, I do. I just think it's far more complex in terms of there are so many more ways to do it now.
And I often.
Talk about this as you get advice and everyone has an idea in a way to help you. Everyone's trying to sell you something as a brand, say this is the answer, radio is the answer, a billboard, TV, social media.
And they're all right, but you can't just get it right. You have to get it really bloody right.
So away you wish your money.
You waste your money.
So for a small business, yeah, I think to take off and be successful these days is it's harder than ever.
So leck do you guys have a media agency at buying agency?
Yes, yep.
So if you're trying to run a brand and you say you want to spend one hundred thousand dollars on advertising for the next three months, maybe you could explain to people how digital media agency works as opposed to advertising agency works. What's the what are the how do the two work? Because by the way, when I did use old John Singleton, I use a mod called Singleton
ogul v maya. Yes, back in the early early days, Yes, they had a buyer's agents buyer agency there too, So I would they would create the ad for me, conceive the ad, they would produce the ad. Usually the production of the ad costs more than the conception of the ad. Well that's a problem, yeah, and which is used annoy the crap out of me, and then they would place the ad and and fact I used And I never knew how this stuff worked. But I had one agent to do everything for me, which is sort of where
things are today, but much more complex. But could you explain how those things work, those things interact, because you can't go along Chong Ryan and just say I want to book fifty spots on the news channel my News a Sunday night for thirty seconds. If they don't lay it do that.
No, And look it's a really interesting one.
Back in terms of the budget splits, we first talk about there's a standardized formula now across I guess all marketers in terms of you should have twenty five percent of your budget for a campaign what we call non working, which is the making of the artwork and the creative and then the other seventy five percent needs to be into the reach and the media and the buy Otherwise you're wasting your money making something that not a lot
of people are going to see. So we see a lot of that sort of formula, and that's a recommendation to everyone listening.
Is that an industry standard, Yeah.
It's fairly industry standard these days.
There's definitely a cap of don't let your agency try and take too much in terms of for them to make the creative.
Does it conclude the production, Yeah, absolutely, like producing the ad, yeah, And that's talent.
Absolutely.
And I think that's one of the pitfalls that I see even small businesses going into in their social media is they spend all their money making the post, but they've got a thousand followers and no one sees it. Yeah, So I think that into play is something that's really really important. But I think in terms of the actual media buy and how that world works, obviously digital media
is far more accessible and easier to buy. You know, as you said before, the major traditional platforms are far more gated and you need to a special license to be on there and buy things, which is some of
the challenges. While we're seeing traditional media sort of start to cripple and fall away just because the barrier to entry and the accessibility and the ease of buying on something like Meta is there you know, there actually is a step by step way where you know a person that is, you know, smart enough to start a business could actually go in there and do it themselves. And that's the brave new world we're in now, where you know, even AI can go and run these ads for you.
But I think the main thing I'd sort of share before you even get to any of these points is, and it's my biggest takeaway for today, is understanding your customer.
Who are they, how do they buy, and how do they make decisions?
And where are they?
And we'll where and where are they? And that and that point there should tell you where you should be. So again, when we use when we got to start a campaign or any form of marketing, the first step is understanding your customer, because for instance, that will really tell you what you should be saying and where you should be and how you convince them. For instance, I had a financial planner with us at the cricket the other day and he goes, I need to use you guys,
and I said, no, you don't. You don't, I said, when it comes to getting a financial planner, how would you make a decision to pick one, and he said, oh, you'd probably get a referral from your accountant, or you'd get a referral from someone you trust. So I said, it's not going to be from a TV ad, a bus stop or a billboard, is it. So you need to go and work your referral partners, and you need to go and work your existing clients, try and get referrals and get them to bring a friend to an
event or an experience. So the fundamentals of marketing and media buying or anything that comes thereafter is actually around who are you going after and how do they make a decision to buy that specific service or product like that?
So can I can we just unpick that a little bit because particularly that point amte about financial plane. This is interesting. The other day I was thinking to myself, I was listening to something on traditional radio to GB in fact, and when I heard a guy get on there there's two guys on the Saturn Afternoon. I like, they call the two Murrays. They're just if I've got nothing to do and I'm driving, put the two Murrays
on that. I don't know the guys, but it's sort of like old, old school radio, okay, and they just gaging each other and stuff like that. Anyway, they got a financial planner guy on to your point, and I have some interest in the financial industry, and he said what he does is he holds seminars. And because the people come to the seminars free free seminar, come to the Wentworth or the Sophotel whatever, free seminar. They say.
You know, because by the way, this particular raization everybody listening to this is probably over sixty five, including me, and they're all retired. But it's the supermniaration industries is confusing as hell. I don't understand it, like I've got no idea, and I actually thought himself, you know what, I would probably go to that seminar if I could be stuffed, you know, like, if I felt like it, I probably could should send my one of my sons along,
who looks after my stuff, my financial stuff. Here's you go along. And I thought of him, So that's very clever. They don't really need to advertise. Your point is that the people that are going to engage with them, their place is probably then probably not even going to look on Facebook. No, you know, I'm probably not those people probably are. I'm mean, I'm on Instagram, but those people probably aren't even on Instagram. My brother's not on Instagram,
for example. He's definitely not on TikTok. He might look on LinkedIn, but still it's he. He would rather turn up and face to face it. If there's five other people in the room, I want to hear what you have to say to me. That's quite important. So if I go back to your point, your point is, apart from working out what your message is going to be, know who your client is or your customer is, and so in doing that, Let's say someone's not doing financial
mone they're doing something totally different. How do they work that out? I mean do they say do they where do they get the data from? Like, yeah, how do I find it? If it's if it's women between thirty and thirty five or thirty and forty single women between thirty and forty, how do I how do you find it out? Yeah?
I mean it's it's something that's hard to work out, but you know it's one of the I guess marketing fundamentals that you should probably even figure out before you start the business is segmenting the market and to do that, you have to understand what the total market is.
Not justly that's an important one. Sure, private equity, Yep, when they've investigated, they say, what is your tail total addressable market? So this is a really important point here. I mean you you just said your addressable market. Yes, the total addressable market otherwise referred to as TL. That is all the people in the world perhaps who are fit into they like to buy a certain time perfume, yeah,
which is made in Egypt because and it's exotic. So whereas so you need to know when you look at the town. And I've never actually done this, but does that mean the number of people or does it mean the number of transactions you can have with those? Bit what does that mean?
You can work it out a number of ways.
I think you know, to get it specifically right, you probably have to engage some market research agency if you really want to go through it.
So do you do that?
Yeah, well, I mean we offer those services. We've got a media planning team. And again the first thing they'll say is, you know, what are these customers? We work it out from a I guess addressable customer based on from an advertising standpoint. So again we work with all our advertisers and they have data on these addressable markets
across these different I guess industry SKUs or verticals. And that is where social media has been way more effective in terms of really drilling down on specific audience groups because I can go on to something like a meta advertising platform and I can say I want males between these ages in these locations that have these political views and like this sport and blah blah blah. You can get the most I guess specific addressable audience from something
like social media. So again going back to the original question, we'd work with our media vendors and brief in audiences and they'd say, well, we have this many.
Media vendors being a television, televisionation.
Medio station, meta, whoever it type is, and we can come back there. And then there's also some market research companies that you know, the experience, and there's some other panels that are readily available online from you gov, and a lot of industry associations and publications will put reports out around total size of industry and customer base. But again, you know, if I was a everyday punter at home, you can get a lot of this from sort of desktop research in.
Terms of so you work out market, you work out the size of the market, and that's the first thing. The second thing is you've got a product, do you before you you've got a skill the ability to build a product that might be makeup mirror, ye say, just to pick something bland and you have a really good idea what you think is going to be done? Do you do that? Or do you go to the market and say, what do you think is going to be done?
What do you do? You? Should you? Because I've seen people build products look fantastic, and they look fantastic me and them, but they don't never sell because the market doesn't give a shit about it. That's not what they want. In terms of researching, should business owners be trying to use their skill to build a product that the market wants or should they be trying to build something that's so cool that they've got to try and convince the market that's what they should have.
Yeah, I'm going to give the answer that sits on the fence because there's two ways so to it. Right, if you look at someone like an Elon Musk, yeah, no one would have said yeah, so anything he's got to build so on the one hand, the market doesn't always recognize innovation. That's probably disruption there, and that is disruption. But in terms of I guess you know every day ninety five percent of businesses that aren't disrupting the market,
it's doing something slightly different. So whether it's faster, cheaper, or a different different sort of skewed design or style and existing product. As I said, you know, what is that competitive advantage? And it could come down to taste and style, price delivery, or you build that brand where it's just you have to have that brand, so the
difference is actually the brand sticker on something. So you know, market research I still believe in in a big way, particularly speaking two different audiences who are from those different segments within that addressable audience and feedback is awesome and even along the way in product design, and I think you know, in terms of building community along the way, having an audience that's brought into the process of this product evolution where they feel like they've got involvement, and
this is anohing. Social media is fantastic for is bringing people on that journey.
I think it's a.
Really good way to design a product and grow and iterate over time is invite your audience into to test and have input.
It's interesting because I was thinking the other day one of a friend of a school made of one of my sons. He's married to a young lady and she's got a bikini brand and she has like a huge following on Instagram, and from all accounts, that's very well
for herself. And I often wondered myself if this like a million I don't know, but I think there's a million bikini brands out there, and I wonder how it is that she's been able to sustain this success for a number of years, probably since I've been watching what she does relative knowing this kid, he's a man, but it's probably five years or so, and I've often wanted to, you know, given the number of bikini brands are going to David Jonas, somebody you'll see like racks and racks
of this stuff. And I don't even know if she sells a dav but no, less, I just wonder why someone like that could be so successful. I mean, what is your experience? What have you seen why someone like her? You don't have to you don't even have to know her, but like, what have they done. What are they doing? She's very consistent, she's always posting, she's traveling all around the world. She's very she's quite a sort of glamorous, but also an everyday girl too at the same times.
Somedow she says, seems a beit to blend the two together. Loves hanging out with all the superstars in America. There's a lot of stuff in America. How do these people sustain these brands and stand out amongst a really big crowd.
Yeah, it's funny.
I mean that that is a space where there is not much disruption. It's the same thing, it's the same triangles with the you know, similar patterns over time. So I think in a space like that where there isn't I guess a lot of I guess differentiators. In terms of product, it does come down to brand, and brand speaks for a number of things, and then we give everything within the brand space. It's that you know that aspiration.
Can you talk about aspiration?
Yeah?
Aspirations is a really interesting one. And you see a lot of celebrity based marketing coming through on social media and even you know, even there's a lot of big sort of tech brands that we're working with now that are using celebrities and these aren't just consurerants B to B brand. So I think it's a really important driver in terms of making a decision and almost picking that team. It's like a team, there's fandom behind it. And so we actually measure this and it's called is this a
brand for someone like me? And we measure this as a marketing outcome, and something that some of the big brands track via surveys is you know, how are we tracking in asking our target audience if we're a brand for someone like them? And so I think when you look at trying to I guess, make someone choose you and be on their team, it is going back to this old school tribalism, like you know, that's I aspire to be like them, I respect them, I want to be part of that. I want to be seen in this.
And that comes down to feeling and there's a whole part. There's a whole part of that, which is why you'll often see brands that have been really successful, particularly fast going entrepreneur brands, the founder will be quite present in their advertising, their social You'll know their story, you know,
even you know you're Pip Edwards. And I'm not a fashion by any stretch imagination, but you know about them and their brand, and you think that person is cool as in pernation, and then that transfers across to the p nation type of pie. So again, in that bikini space, it is very much around you know who you are, who you hang out with, and I want to be seen in that because I want to.
Be like them.
I got together by I just quickly want to like you, nearly got to be psychologists to do what you do. It's psychology, yeah, yeah, and maybe even say, on the example of the bikini brand I was talking about, nearly like got to be a psychologist to be able to run that brand. I don't know if she has an agency or not, but she has to know how people roll, yep.
And and maybe I should and maybe I've never attributed enough knowledge to her, her ability to understand how people think relative to them, aspiring to be the same person as she is or the people she hangs with, well that she promotes that she hangs with it. She may not, she may be a complete recluse for all owner, but just on Instagram in moment, I mean, I know our Instagram shows me is doing something a certain way, but
I'm not necessarily that same person in private. And so the psychology of working out how people will, for example, on that example which is gave be aspire to be you and therefore wear the same outfit of the same bikini that you're selling, how does if I'm using an agency, how does an agency address that? Is? In other words, let's say, all, I'm really good at sewing, I can make it, or I got a team in China can make this stuff. But I'm obless that the rest of
the psychology, and I come along to you. What's the first thing apart from knowing the addressable market, what's the next thing that you would do? What would you analyze about my audience? My market?
Yeah, I mean it's really interesting that the first thing is understanding audience. We do a big analysis piece on that. It's not just how big they are, it's the psychology behind who they are, how they think, how they buy, and we look at that as a as a as a full research project, just that one sort of line item itself. The next thing we go down TI when we look at your brand, who you are, what you stand for, what's your point of difference?
What are your values?
You know, what can we pull out in an unearth from what you're already doing or what you stand for that's going to make you, I guess, stand out from the pack. So looking at that, and again that might not be aspirational, it might be value based, and so you might say someone's got a sort of a big sustainable stew in terms of what they're doing so well.
In other words, is it gets particular material, what's the story the cotton comes from some pure place that hasn't got no been bleached or.
Something exactly, something that's meaningful to people. And then the next thing is we also look at the industry and your competitors. So who else is selling this in this space?
What are they doing?
How can we be different? How can we take some of the things that have worked from them and copy that or do it better. So when you start to round out this sort of I guess value proposition or this strategy, it's who are my audience, how do they think, how are they buying, who else is selling to them?
What are they doing? What are they doing well?
And then what do we do and what have we got that we can do better or pull out to sort of I guess pitch or propose or sell that's going to go around these competitors, over them, through them, but still adhere to my audience and what they want. And I think that's my biggest advice to any businesses. I find a lot of business owners they jump to the tactic I've got to get to a social posit or of this. It's pulling them back and saying.
Who's your audience strategy first?
Strategy first, And I think spend more time there and do less of the tactics and you'll be further ahead.
I'm going to go to the break. We're gonna come back for the bag. I want to talk but to you about and if you don't mind the raiding your product or innovating a rounding product, how important that is and in terms of marketing. You know, and I fund him. I just had a gym franchise business on prior to you, and he was talking about how they have to keep evolving their proposition to keep ahead of all the competition because it's heavy competition and they're and you know, they're
in Asia, Japan, Singapore, United States, and Australia. But he says his success is about innovating his product all the time, you know, changing it up all the time. Make sure you're head of the pack, or at least up with the pack. But I want to ask you about that, and then I want to talk to you after the break about platforms that we use and how do we how often do we use these platforms, and how do we work out which ones we should be looking at. But let's go to the break. Come straight back. I'm
back from the break. He was saying, Kelly, here is a managing partner of Hello Social soon to change the name to Hollow. You're a full service agency. You do everything around marketing. If I could just use that loose word because it covers a lot of stuff, Just if I just think about what we talked about before the break, A person who's going into business or is already in business and is thinking about, you know, going into a
serious advertising environment. It's pretty daunting because the stuff you and I just discussed, it's like a lot of stuff like you can fuck it up easy, and by not doing the research. What about people who just say stuff And I'm not going to do the re I'm just going to act on instinct. I mean, I guess you're just going to me, well, there's a fifty to fifty change would be good, it's going to be bad.
It's not fifty to fifty.
But yeah, it's probably a lot less skewed against against success. I mean, but it is sort of daunting. I mean, like, I mean the big organizations who you know, you guys act for a lot of them, but I can sort of see that they're going to go through the process. They're more process driven. Of course, what about newbies, I mean, how do they address this issue or do it themselves? Should they do it themselves? Do the research because the research piece is heavy potentially to get it right.
Yeah.
No, I think the people that are in these industries that have these ideas, they wouldn't be doing it unless they thought they could do it better than someone else. So there's already a baseline level of knowledge around how the space works. And if you've had this internal motivation to go and try it for yourself, there's probably passion that's been there for a long time. But to really turn that passion into something that they've got to be like, I can do it better than them. So there's already
a baseline understanding of the industry. I think that the key part in this is is get some help, ask some questions, do some research, because again, you can often as a business own to be clouded by your own sort of ego or bravado or I think I can do it better than them. So I think there's definitely a case of building a team. And that team doesn't have to only be friends and family. It can be
some other people who are passionate in the space. So again it doesn't mean a big expensive strategy research agency coming in. It's do your own research, spend some time and more time. I think a lot of entrepreneurs and people that say these businesses are quite impatient. It's a skill from in many aspects because you just get out and do it and start having a crack, and you know, test,
test and learn and fail fast and go again. But I still think that can get you so far, and this sophistication around doing this research and this planning, if you can get a certain way, and it's funny even you hear these success stories about but I just woke up and I just did it, and I loved it, and I had a crack and and we got there.
I guarantee you they'll hear the point.
Where they do two three million dollars revenue a year, and they'll go, there's got to be some strategy that comes into it. So that earlier you can start thinking like this in front learning this, the more successful you will be in terms of getting to a point like that where you've even.
Got a viable business.
So, yeah, it's about putting pen to paper, or if you don't put pen to paper, get a whiteboard, get your notes in your phone, and start saying, who is my audience, how do they think, how do they buy? What can I do better than my competitors? And then you know, what's my story?
How do I articulate it?
And how do I message it? Yeah, so we just and you sort of what you've just You said it earlier, but you said, don't be tactical. Tactical is important, but have a strategy first. You've got to have a strategy. And what you were talking about is a whole marketing strategy here.
Yeah, And I think strategy is a scary word, right, Like you think it's it's this big book or a pretty presentation. It's it's not really Like I did one the other day for a recovery clinic. A good friend of mine. He said, Oh, my sister's got a recovery clinic. You know, they do wellness and recovery and all sorts of stuff. And they've got all these amazing treatments, the best, the best machine in the country. And I went in and I had a tour, and the stuff in there
were amazing. They were talking about all these machines that only were in hospitals and they have only one in the country from America. And I said, what can this help me with? I said, this sounds great, but I don't need this. And when we flipped it on its head and we said, well, corporates can use this to reduce stress, or it's an alternate to Western medicine, or you can lose fat and tone in stubborn areas and all these things post of recovery from surgery or neg
reconstructions or all these things. I said, start there. Start not speaking about treatments and services. Start with things that relate to audiences and problems you can solve for them. And when we just flipped that narrative by talking strategy for five minutes, it's like you could just see the light bulbs and it's like, oh my gosh, yeah, we can go after corporates who are stressed and provide this or post pregnancy. And I said, these are huge audience
groups with money. So if you said to me, come and use this x X fifty five hundred X ray machine, I would have said, I'm too busy.
What are you talking about going? I don't it.
That looks expensive, looks cool. But if you said you're a corporate, you work a lot, your stress, you know, you don't have time to train as much. You've got a busy family life. An hour in here for five hundred bucks can actually even you out and get you going again. I'd say it's the best five hundred bucks I've ever spent.
It's interesting to say because I'm just thinking about knee reconstructions because I know it's going to have one recently. And like if you get an nee reconstruction costion tank grant, so you've got money you and last, and generally's being you're a bit sort of advanced. You're not like twenty five or thirty five, like you're probably you know, fifty or something that you might be interested. I was thinking about hyper barrier chambers, but like you know it's two
hundred bucks or something. You might. You might if that speeds up your recovery, you might do it. But not many people. Actually, I've never seen an ad or anything coming out anywhere, and I'm sort of all over socials and I've never been fed this, So no one's probably ever asked the question of the social media companies. Fine, Mark Boris for me, and because otherwise I would have found me, it would have offered me at some stage because I'm won there a lot, unfortunately, probably too much.
But the hyperbaric chambers has never come to me ever ever, And that sort of recovery thing is that's a really good point that you made. It Often we just don't. Often business owners are experts in what they do and not really don't know much more about anything else. They don't have an expertise in relation to their marketplace, who
they should be taking and what the message is. I did say to you early on how important is in a continual innovation in relation to your product or your service relative to staying relevant as a brand?
Yeah, it's interesting. I think I'm all for product. It's one of the key pillars in marketing is product evolution. Product development. You know, they say you can't roll a shit in glitter, and so you can't advertise your way out of something that is not great, because you'll spend a lot of money trying to convince people to use it. They'll use it and it's all over. And especially with this word of mauth referral and social media these days, people will be in the comment saying it doesn't work,
don't buy it, don't buy it. So product is massive for two reasons. One is it gives you something to talk about constantly in your marketing.
In other words, it's our new iteration. With this new.
Iterations, I think you mentioned before when we were talking earlier around around gym's highly competitive space. It's a bit of a fat industry and everyone wants the latest and greatest. So when you're under that sort of pressure, reinvesting in your product is super important. But even in other industries where it's actually not as competitive or there isn't as much hype around the program itself.
I talk about.
Experience and customer experience. So you know, something like an uber for instance, their product is phenomenally good and that is one of the main reasons why everyone uses it. Yes, it's been disruptive, but the customer service, the functionality on there, and it's significantly better than their competitors in terms of the constant innovation. So product itself in terms of the core fundamental what it is, but then also that customer success around it is really really important and we see
a lot of that on social media now. Some brands choose to invest in community management and a lot of the stuff that comes through there is And I had this the other day myself. I bought an expensive umbrella at Christmas time. I put it into the sand up at Avalon Beach the other day and the point.
Snapped off it.
And so I went to this small business owner had this great umbrella brand in Bayron Bay, and I said, hey, this happened.
Bang.
Within five minutes, she said, there's a new there's a new pole with a spike on the way. So I'm now a brand advocate. So I think whether you call it product or or the pieces that sit around that experience that wasn't a good product, but my experience around it was amazing. So you kind of give them the grace they fix it. And I'm an advocate, So yeah, product can mean different things, but it's customer experience is super.
That's a really good good example to mens the brand. But that's a really good example because what it tells me then as well, what's important is that once I buy the product, I've got to know who to contact. There's got to be someone that can ring, I can ring or whatever, email, whatever the case may be, that I don't want to have to go searching everywhere for it.
I mean, that sort of service side of it, or accessibility side of it is critical because you might not live in Byron, but you might live in Melbourne and you're not going to travel to Byron at the shop you bought it out of wherever the case may be. You want to be able to get to it. And because that's part of the experience exactly, customer experience is critical. And on the innovation piece, innovating Uber is a good example.
I mean, and I was not a big Uber user because I had one bad experience with Uber many many many like in the early days. But I have been using Uber much more in the last eighty months and the experience of phenomenal, Like it's amazing. You can see where the car is, you know what's going on that you can textally do they can come back to you, you can call them, you can change the sort of undred business on the road. Where are you? It's just like,
is that about technology? Though a zuba more a technology business than anything else. Is it really about the car the driving or is it about the technology that I'm accessing? Oh?
I think Look, it's obviously a tech business, but they've got a vision and a mission to make the world a better place and sort of move with purpose. So the movement piece is important, but it's supported by technology. But I think the core fundamental there, and the point that everyone should take away is you can make mistakes along the way, but if you put your head in the sand and ignore it and say that's it, that's
not the answer. I think people are quite understanding will give you grace as long as they can see that you are addressing it, communicating and trying to reinvest to make things better.
Over to should you tell everybody that you're doing that? I mean, should you get up and said, look, we made a mistake, but we're addressing it. I think we've got a solution coming up, but it's not far away.
Yeah, I mean I think so, and I think it's one of those things that's obviously sensitive for the bigger companies, but I think for smaller companies you see it on TikTok.
All the time.
Now we call it the not the B to B or B two C or we call it the P to P, so it's person to person. So the owner gets on there and goes live and say, hey, look, we've had a bit of feedback around said umbrella or bikini breaking. We're working on it. Let us know if you have an issue and we'll replace it. Ll give you half press off the next one. People go, this is a good business, you know, like they're trying, they're solving things, they're listening and they're working on things. So
we've made plenty of mistakes as a business. And if you were to judge us on how we were hello social ten years ago compared to now, some people would say, oh my gosh. So you know, don't use them in your formative years, you stuff up. But now it's a very different proposition. So I think as long as you communicate that people sort of come on the journey.
With you, can I get some quick sort of quick hits from you. So from our small business community listens to us a small business audience. Maybe some tips as to what small business owners in terms of marketing not do. What's something they shouldn't do? And maybe you've seen this happen, but are there's some tips says to what they should not do?
Yeah.
I think most entrepreneurs are naturally reactive. They're always switched on, They're always thinking. They see something, it gives them idea, They text, they pivot, they change. So that tenacity and I guess competitiveness and reactiveness is a good thing, but it can also get you in a knot So I think, as I said before, it's about having that fundamental strategy. And if it's a one pager on who's my audience, how do they think?
How do they buy?
Here's our messages and you have that cheat sheet, put it on your bed, put it on your desk, put it in your factory, just referencing that before you go and make that snap decision and go Does this comply
with how people are thinking of what we're doing? Yes, do it, because otherwise you'll be waking up every single day and you'll see this social media trend or you'll see this, or you'll hear someone saying be on radio, or change this or move your manufacturing to China, and you'll try and do it all.
So I think have that north star and alignment piece and as your guideline, as your guideline. So because entrepreneurs by usually by definition tend to get distracted easily. Yeah, but and they hear something's gone really well or should I be doing that? Yeah, I mean you just have something you've experienced with people. They're sort of bouncering a lot.
Absolutely, and I think it's actually quite interesting.
We started working with small businesses who have their own money, and now we've sort of worked our way up into large enterprise because when you are dealing with the customer and it's actually their money, the yeah, it's far more I guess reactive, and there is there is pressure, so again you have to be far more reactive. So yeah, naturally entrepreneurs are are reactive, which is is a pro and a con.
That's your point too, before the tamaking earlier too, because big organizations go strategic and they roll it out small owners, small smaller business owners spending their own money, and they get influenced easily buy something else and then become tactical.
And you forget about the strategy correct. And I think one of the big takeaways from this discussion from a from a big organization looks after your organization, looks after big clients, is that no matter who you are, build a strategy day one and try and stick to it at least as you say, it's your north star. Try not to move way too much from it. Is there something that you've seen Obviously you've seen some good smaller businesses,
good entrepreneurs. I mean it was a great example that they kicked off as a small business in Australia effectively now is a huge business. Are there some things that you would tell small business owners our audience that have worked and turned small businesses into big businesses, apart from being strategic and sticking to the strategy, But are there are there some sort of guidelines you could sort of leave us with what's worked for some of your now
bigger clients. Who what he wants for small clients? And by the way, everybody, everybody, at some stage or other was a small business. They all start off a small business. General electric was invented by Thomas Edison in eighteen fifty six, and he invented a light bulb, and he turned into a company called General Electric. Now it's one of the biggest companies of the world, but it start off as a small business. Every business starts that way. Whober included
CBA comm with bank Westpac whoever. You want to talk about. What have you seen that makes that Is there a one or two consistent things that seems to be president of every small business that becomes a successful, bigger business.
For me, at the beginning, it's all about revenue. How do you make that phone ring? How do you make that till ring? And that's where your focus should be. We get very obsessed when we're business owners around our brand and our logo and our colors and making sure everything's perfect. The focus should be on what makes the
phone ring and ensuring I look after my people. And so for me, small business, lead generation, sales generation, and those tactics need to be your fundamental that you get right and then work out the sexy stuff after that.
And are there any particular right now, Are there any particular platforms mediums that are working better than others? I mean, is our under outstanding mediums?
Yeah, look at it obviously depends on the business and where you need to be. I think, let's say retail retail, I think or the issue their online digital retail. You should be, you know, your Google Search, Google Shop, and then obviously your performance platforms like Meta and TikTok in terms of performance ads, and by performance ads, I mean.
What I mean, I don't know what that means.
Yeah, it's a good question.
So you've got your grid that you post on, which is for your community for you, however many thousand followers.
And you go on there.
But then it's your dark ads, which run through a targeted platform where you can go and punch in who you want to find.
And let's say I was trying to sell the hyperbaric chambers.
I say high net worth, active blah blah blah blah blah, And I get an ad and I post up that single ad, and I say send it to those people. So they're not necessarily a follower, but Facebook, Meta, Instagram knows who they are and it will put those ads in their feed. That is the quickest way to get straight to exactly who you need to. And it's the most potent search criteria that there is out there.
That's interesting. You call it dark as I love that name. Well, We've never actually gone out looking for anybody on now because we're just a broadcaster. But we don't have a product. But what you're saying to me is that I can do whatever I want on my stories and I can put it every one on my grid on Instagram for argument's sake. But if we had a product that we wanted to sell, then we'd be doing this so called.
We would profile the person who I have now as a result of talking to have researched, and that's my buyer. I would profile them off to whoever it is, Instagram, something all meta, and then I'll pay a fee and they'll find those people correct, and then they will send it. Then we'll develop the message, and then or might come to you and you will develop the message for me, and then we'll hit them.
We'll hit them, and you can even go as far as putting your objective in there around I want to watch the video, or I want to send them to my website.
It just met It does. Do the platforms ask you do, They prompt.
You take you through a survey or a question in air where you say, who's the person, what do you want them to do? It's very intuitive and I think. You know, most people can go through this platform themselves and build something out.
Now I can't go. I can't let you go without asking one quick question. Should I using chatby to write mads for me? As both coming to you?
Oh, it's a funny one, but you're not looking. You don't laugh at that hardy Yeah, Ai, it's interesting, it's coming.
We're talking about it. How do you guys use it? How will you use it?
It's funny because we actually say that, you know, chat GPT is amazing as a baseline and you can get a lot of ideas from it, but we also have a rule in our agency that we don't want to be spitting out things that everyone else has access to.
Which chatchby do will do?
Which which it will do?
Is it tastes one common denominator? It grabs everything.
It's like a mass internet search and or can put pull a lot together and spit out an answer. So we say we run that process and say, well, we don't use anything that comes off on that list because it's too generic. So for us in that sort of you know, top tier, we say, well that's our don't do list. But I guess for smaller, medium sized business. It's the power of that thing is phenomenal in terms of and even that research we spoke about before, of understanding my audience, how do they think?
Where do they buy?
You could ask chat GPT those questions and it could be your strategist for you.
So because someone might have already published something about exactly that topic, and chat GP you'll go and find it somewhere.
It'll go to the yeah, the dark depths and pull everything that's relevant together and give you a you know, a one page cheat.
Sheet on on what you should do.
It's not a bad starter.
It's a great starter.
It's funny, you know, because the years not that long ago, about any months I thought I'd tried it, and I was making a speech and I asked, I'd already written speech, asked chat you bee to right to miss speech. I said, give me my coming. How many words was this? My audience is what I'm talking about? Blah blah, And it gave me. It was not bad like it was as you said. It was very generic. It wasn't It wasn't what I wanted to deliver. Didn't have enough personal stuff
in there, my story stuff. But it wouldn't have known about my story stuff because I not published my story stuff, so it comes to pick up my stuff. But it was actually not a bad yardstick meat for me to look at in terms of what other people have talked about. It was about leadership or something like that, and it wasn't a bad yards to go on based on what you know, John F. Kennedy might have said about leadership. You know, it drags that sort of stuff in for you.
It gives you a few little nice markers and says to me, in relation to the speech i'd written, I'm on the right track. It wasn't what I was going
to say, but I'm on the right track. It gives you a bit of confidence if you're you know, like not that I'm not someone who's sort of lacking in confidence, but other people are starting off business and they sort of go through the exise you're talking about, and you know, and they've done all the research and they've worked out the researching says this is what the message was saying. Is perhaps the language the message should be put into, and these are the platforms are going to go to.
You've done your work, Yeah, try it out, give it a crack and see if there's any variability between what you've come up with and what someone else has already probably said problems to chat to. Your journey goes to twenty twenty one. It doesn't go beyond that, but it doesn't matter. You're going to get a bit of a guideline.
Yeah, correct, And I think you know there's a lot of I guess when it's starting business. I guess, you know blind spots. You know, I know how to make X, and you know I don't know how to do the financials or even the marketing. I think it can give you a really nice, I guess entry point into some of these worlds. And yeah, writing ads and writing copy for social posts certainly an area it can help you with for sure.
And final question, at what stage should a new business owner or a business owner for that matter been around for a while come and see your agencies? I mean like when is it prohibited for them to come and see and when is the sweet spot?
Yeah, it's interesting.
Look in terms of I guess bringing in external partners and agencies, what I'd recommend as a first stepping stone is actually, I guess fragment the services, So don't come for a fully managed service, and I'll use social media. For example, Let's say I know how to write the captions and do the hosts, and I can, you know, manage the community right back to everyone, but I don't
know how to make the video. I would suggest you be the entrepreneur you've been, yes, correct, I would suggest, you know, go go and get a videographer to help you make that one part of it, because if you're going to outsource the full thing, you know, you're going to start to look at, you know, starting at five thousand dollars a month for sort of a small agency to start to manage your socials in its entirety.
Whereas if you.
Get, you know, spend that five thousand dollars on getting some videos made, you could get three months worth of videos made that you post and you do. So it's starting to look at Yeah, I guess how you can decouple some of these these bits and pieces, and then from there you'd start to move up through your managed services where they sort of look after the whole thing, or you look at you bring in a marketing strategist for.
Me internally who might then link in with an organization exactly.
And I think one of the other risks that I see a lot of small businesses do is they hire a junior or a cheap marketer to come and sit in the house. The risk you have there is no one can do all of this, the strategy and the execution across all the different channels, So you know before you even get to the point of making that higher can that individual do the thing you actually need. So for me, it's around understanding what do I need now,
what bits of that process can I do? And then any of the bits that I can't do, then go and pay someone else to come in and plug that gap, not do the whole.
And when it comes to looking at an organization or looking for an organization, whether it's Hello Social or someone else similar to yourselves or either smaller or bigger or whatever, you sort of got to edge of the menu and look what's on the menu, just like you do if you got a restaurant, you've got to choose the meal.
You don't have to choose every meal. Correct, You're mostly you're not going to need everything on the menu, So go on there and before you can choose what's on the bill on the men you better know what the various aspects are, which is sort of why I appreciate you coming in today. I'm sort of explaining this stuff to not only me, but our audience are It's really important.
Small business owners are dying to find out about how they can propel their business and become vibers, the virgins and all the sorts of people that you ordinarily rub shoulders with. But can I ask you that you do actually rub shoulders with smaller businesses, don't you.
Yeah? Yeah, from a personal standpoint, absolutely, yeah.
Okay, thanks very much.
I really appreciate it, Narras, thanks for having me. Cheers, my